No Store Bought Appetizers Here: The Story of Our Fruit Tarts

At Savory, we uphold the highest standard for the quality of our food. Chef Lou will not take shortcuts. She believes in giving the BEST to our customers.

Chef Lou puts it this way, "At first I used to buy the pastry shells from a supplier. They were dry and didn't have any flavor! I soon realized I could make a much better pastry shell. My recipe has some orange zest so it gives the dough just a hint of citrus. I also use a flower cookie cutter because the scalloped edges look so cute. It's the little details that put this recipe from good to GREAT."

It's the small things that make the Fruit Tart a winner: white chocolate lines the inside of the shell so it doesn't get soggy, real vanilla French Pastry cream is used, a variety of fresh sliced fruit individually arranged on each tart, and a shiny apricot glaze for the finishing touch.

 Fruit Tarts are a great in-between for those who want a slightly sweet dessert option.

Thanks to Bekah Loss Photography for the pictures.

Fall in Love with Pasta Salad

Let's face it, we've all tasted some UN-appetizing pasta salad in our time, maybe even been the culprit in making it! Perhaps some of us are disenchanted by too many lack luster, ugly, mushy pasta salads. (I definitely used to fit in this category)

That ends now.

Chef Lou makes various delectable pasta salads sure to change your mind and make you hungry for more. One of these new breeds of pasta salad is our Asian Pasta Salad.

Asian Pasta Salad

The salad has bowtie pasta, craisins, mandarin oranges, honey roasted peanuts, sesame seeds, chicken bits and spinach.

We've served this as a side for a corporate lunch, at a banquet, and just recently as an appetizer!

We add fresh spinach last to keep it fresh and crunchy. We also blanch our pasta as soon as it finishes cooking to keep it from getting mushy and broken up.

When serving it as an appetizer we change a couple of things:

• We change the bowtie pasta to ditalini pasta
• Add some bright green edamame and use less spinach
• For plating we add crunchy rice sticks and black sesame seeds.
• Serve it on an Asian spoon

Each spoon is individually arranged with rice sticks and a diagonally-cut scallion

Then for the buffet we either serve it on a tray or on our cupcake stand. It sure is one great tasting appetizer!

Fresh Ingredients

 Spring is always an exciting time of the year. The trees are budding, colorful flowers are blooming, and our part of the world is becoming green again. For me, spring brings the anticipation of eating fresh(er) fruits and vegetables. I love visiting the roadside stands and picking out the best apples, melons, and fresh corn.

Vibrant purple Hyacinth. It smelled SO good.

Fresh ingredients are the best ingredients. There is no contest about it. Try it yourself. Take a can of canned corn (my husband, for some reason, loves canned corn) and a fresh ear of corn. Eat the two types side by side and you can taste a difference. Both taste like corn, but the fresher corn has a bigger depth of flavor. Plus it's doesn't taste like preservatives.

My love of fresh ingredients comes from my family. My siblings and I grew up tilling, planting, weeding, and harvesting our small garden. It is a beautiful and exciting process to see a tiny seed be planted, poke out of the ground and become a full fledged plant. I tried to learn as much as I could about the different plants and their varying needs.  Those same concepts I learned as a young whippersnapper are used at Savory.

We believe in using only the freshest ingredients from our approved sources. Just yesterday Chef Lou had me taste test some muffins we were sampling from a store. She picked up on a slight preservative aftertaste in the muffin and we decided that we could make a better tasting, fresher muffin. We also translate that same idea of working together into our own catering family.

See the difference yourself! Whether your home be big or small, try growing your own garden. Plant some fresh herbs, an upside-down tomato plant, fruit trees, peppers, squash, etc.

Cook with fresh ingredients, it'll make all the difference.